With over 2,500 pages of content updated daily per season, you might have missed the Production by Position numbers we create for both teams and individual players.

On the team side, this data is meant to showcase the kind of performance the team is seeing at each position (PG, SG, SF, PF, C) in a variety of stats.

We are pleased to announce that our "production by position" pages for each team now include a PER rating based upon John Hollinger's formula expressed in his excellent Pro Basketball Prospectus books. This allows for direct single-number comparisons and analysis.

The league average for a PER rating is 15.0, and a higher number is better for the team rating, a lower number is better in the opponent PER column. As an example, here are the PER ratings by position for the LOS ANGELES LAKERS (full 03-04 regular season):

Lakers Production by Position

Position

Team PER*

Opp. PER*

Net

PG

16.2

14.3

+1.9

SG

17.0

14.5

+2.5

SF

12.9

15.0

-2.1

PF

14.1

16.3

-2.2

C

21.4

12.6

+8.8

So at a glance you can see the Lakers are getting outstanding performance in head-to-head matchups with their opponents at the Center spot, are doing well at the Shooting Guard, and Point Guard positions, but getting outperformed at the Small Forward and Power Forward matchups (although Karl Malone's injuries may have something to say about the latter position).

The complete list of team production by position pages is listed to the left, and we will run some features shortly showing the ranks of all the teams at once.